Outside boundaries of the residency rules

Many public employees in the region are indifferent to residency requirements

Updated 7:33 am, Monday, November 26, 2012

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Lo Ann Sanders, Saratoga County's deputy clerk, claims her primary residence an apartment that she rents to tenants in this Galway commerical building. The apartment is on Route 29, above a diner and hair salon located in a building Sanders owns. less

Lo Ann Sanders, Saratoga County's deputy clerk, claims her primary residence an apartment that she rents to tenants in this Galway commerical building. The apartment is on Route 29, above a diner and hair salon ... more

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Lo Ann Sanders, a Saratoga County deputy clerk and former Galway town Republican chairperson, lists an address for this apartment over a diner in payroll and voter-registration records. Sanders lives in Fulton County, according to people who know her. less

Lo Ann Sanders, a Saratoga County deputy clerk and former Galway town Republican chairperson, lists an address for this apartment over a diner in payroll and voter-registration records. Sanders lives in Fulton ... more

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The letters "L Sanders" are glued on this door leading to an apartment over a Galway diner which Lo Ann Sanders, a Saratoga County deputy clerk, claims as her primary residence. An employee of the diner said Sanders recently rented the apartment to a tenant. less

The letters "L Sanders" are glued on this door leading to an apartment over a Galway diner which Lo Ann Sanders, a Saratoga County deputy clerk, claims as her primary residence. An employee of the diner said ... more

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Mike Lyons, president of the union representing Albany County correction officers, acknowledged violating a rule that requires employees to live in the county. Lyons, whose address in payroll records is the residence of a fellow correction officer, said he will move back to Albany County and that he was unaware the rule applied to him. less

Mike Lyons, president of the union representing Albany County correction officers, acknowledged violating a rule that requires employees to live in the county. Lyons, whose address in payroll records is the ... more

Outside boundaries of the residency rules

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The rustic diner is next to a truck depot on a rumbling and rural stretch of Route 29 in the north end of Galway. Locals often crowd the lunch counter that shares the first floor with a small hair salon. Out back, a door with "L. Sanders" on the outside leads upstairs to a tiny one-room apartment.

For years, Saratoga County's deputy clerk, Lo Ann Sanders, has listed the apartment as her primary residence in county payroll, voter and property tax records, including school-tax rebate forms.

But Sanders doesn't actually live in the apartment, which she has rented to tenants, according to people familiar with her situation and an employee of the diner downstairs. Instead, Sanders lives several miles west in neighboring Fulton County, where she shares a home with a longtime acquaintance.

Yet Sanders is subject to a state law that requires municipal officers to live in the county where they work. She is among dozens, possibly hundreds, of government workers throughout the region who may flout state or local rules that require they live in the communities in which they work and vote.

A review of public records, and interviews with numerous government officials, show the residency violations have become so widespread, in part because of lax enforcement, that some municipalities have largely given up on residency rules.

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In Albany County, Sheriff Craig Apple estimates at least 30 of his more than 700 employees live outside Albany County without residency waivers, which are granted by the County Legislature only in special instances, such as to cover a nursing shortage. The state Public Officers Law requires most government employees to live in the "political subdivision" where they work.

Some municipalities, including Albany County, which employs about 2,500 people, also implemented their own residency rules decades ago to expand the state requirement to cover all workers under the theory that employees who live where they work become more invested in the community.

In some instances, employees have used the addresses of friends, co-workers, businesses and even supervisors to avoid detection. The sporadically enforced measures have also been used at times as weapons by political foes, or to target employees for termination who may have fallen out of favor with supervisors.

Earlier this month, Albany County filed an unusual court case that seeks more than $400,000 in back wages — and termination — of a county correction officer who lives and owns a home in Saratoga County — in violation of the county's residency rule. The officer, Russell Henry, has been on disability for about eight years and he said that county sheriff's officials had full knowledge he's been living outside the county for many years.

Henry noted that many other officers are violating the rule but not being sued. Among those officers is Mike Lyons, a correction officer who is well liked by Apple and others in the county administration. Lyons, who has been a correction officer since 1997, is president of the union representing 276 jail officers. Recently, after the Times Union asked county officials for information on Lyons' employment status, he contacted the newspaper and acknowledged living with his family in an adjacent county. He said the reason payroll records list his address as the Latham residence of a fellow jail officer is because that address was put on file at a time when he was living away from his family.

Lyons, 41, said he thought he wasn't subject to the county residency rule enacted in 1995, two years before he was hired. He said his confusion stemmed from a conversation with county personnel who told him he was exempt because he'd previously worked for an Albany school district and was already in the state retirement system. The advice was wrong.

Lyons also said he "never got a letter" that the county sent to employees in 2009 asking them to verify their residency. Numerous people who lived outside the county at that time were allowed to move back rather than face termination, Lyons said.

"I have to be afforded the same opportunity to move back (into the county) that everybody else was back in 2009," he said.

Meanwhile, the county's decision to bring court action against Henry has unsettled the county's workforce. "There's a lot of people who it affects and they don't know what to do," Lyons said. "I don't have the answers for them at this point."

Lyons said he intends to put his home up for sale and move back to Albany County. In the meantime, he also sought intervention from Shawn Morse, a Cohoes firefighter and chairman of the Albany County Legislature.

Morse said Albany County and other communities that have enacted residency rules, including Rensselaer County and the city of Troy, are becoming cornered because they have rarely enforced the law. But Morse said he believes the rule is important because "it keeps people within the county."

"I volunteer in my community. I try to buy stuff at the local store," Morse said. "I also believe that it appears from a lot of the research that I've been doing that it has been a requirement that elected officials seem to have allowed to exist but not necessarily enforce."

Supporters say the legislation was driven, in part, by a concept that government workers not only are more involved in the communities where they work, but also spend tax dollars there.

Yet in the mid-1980s, state lawmakers began loosening the statewide measure under pressure from New York City police and firefighters unions, which wanted the rules eased so their members could live in bordering New York counties, including hundreds who were doing so in violation of the law. The amendment, adopted by the state Legislature, applied only to municipalities with populations of greater than 1 million people. But dozens of other communities have followed suit, adopting home-rule laws that exempted certain job titles in their communities from the statewide rules.

But many communities went a different direction and sought to strengthen the residency requirement.

Two months ago, Rensselaer County Sheriff Jack Mahar sent letters to more than 30 sheriff's employees ordering them to move back into the county or face termination. Mahar said the issue bubbled up when some officers tried to file change-of-address forms indicating they'd left the county.

"They said 'I moved,' and I said 'you can't,' " the sheriff said. "I said: 'the law states you can't do it, so we're going to put you on notice and we'll go from there.' "

Recently, Mahar said, his position softened as the county attorney negotiated a grace period with Council 82, the union representing the sheriff's employees affected by the rule, and agreed to give violators until Oct. 31, 2013, to come into compliance.

"The law states specifically that all law enforcement and correctional officers live in the municipality in which they're employed," Mahar said. "We haven't enforced it because we never really thought we had a problem."

Locally, the residency rules boiled over last year when Albany County sheriff's officials fired a Stop-DWI counselor, Erin Loffredo, and her former supervisor and then the Stop-DWI coordinator, Leonard Crouch, following a series of Times Union stories that raised questions about Loffredo's use of several bogus addresses, including an Albany residence at which Crouch's mother-in-law lives. Loffredo, who owns a home in Rensselaer County, lost a court battle in which she sued to get her job back by claiming the county's rule was improper and that top sheriff's officials had sanctioned her use of a phony address.

Another Albany sheriff's official, John Curry, who was a part-time critical incident coordinator, resigned as the Times Union reported on his use of a Latham veterinarian's address in county payroll records. Curry owns a home in Rensselaer County.

Still, enforcement of the rules have been selective.

Henry, who suffered a debilitating back injury when he worked at the Albany County jail, said he believes the county is targeting him because of his disability status.

Deputy Clerk Sanders, who was formerly chairwoman of the Galway Town Republican Committee and is actively involved in Saratoga County politics, has openly lived across the county border, according to people who have attended political functions at her Fulton County residence.

In a brief telephone interview last week, Sanders repeatedly interrupted a reporter attempting to ask questions about her residency status, then declared: "This call is coming to an end." When asked if she lives in the apartment over the diner, she said: "Here we go again. ... I own property. I have a residence in the town of Galway, thank you for your time." Sanders then hung up the telephone and wouldn't respond to follow-up questions sent in an email.

John J. Kalinkewicz, Saratoga County's director of personnel, said he can't recall a case involving enforcement of the state residency rule in the 23 years he's worked there. "It's very difficult, cloudy at best, to pull something out of there that says they must do this," Kalinkewicz said, but he added that residency is looked at "very distinctly" when someone is hired. He also said that the rule applies to civil service positions.

"I believe in residency preference in the civil service system, however, when we get to technical and specialized positions ... if we were locked into residency, it would really limit our ability to find the right person."

In Troy, numerous employees are reported to live outside the city's borders, including Bill Chamberlain, the director of operations, and George Rogers, who heads the city's recreation programs. Michael Fraser, a spokesman for Mayor Lou Rosamilia, said the mayor, in his first term, has made hiring and employing city residents a focus of his administration. Fraser said he moved to Troy after Rosamilia tapped him for the job.

"The enforcement of that (rule) has varied greatly between administrations over the years," Fraser said. "The focus for Mayor Rosamilia is that he's concerned about the hires he makes moving forward."